


Good Things Come In Small Packages

by InitialA



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Boyfriends, Carlos is a Dork, Cecil is a Dork, Coffee Addict, Comedy, Crack, Everyone is a dork, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Living Together, M/M, POV Third Person Limited, Scientist Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), Sharing a Bed, Species Swap, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, forgetful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 13:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/966285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InitialA/pseuds/InitialA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He really should be used to this by now, the waking up and finding something weird had happened overnight thing. </p>
<p>Carlos POV</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Things Come In Small Packages

He really should be used to this by now, the waking up and finding something weird had happened overnight thing. Waking up to a hamster on your face wasn’t particularly normal by even Night Vale standards. Nor was finding that your live-in, can-I-be-the-big-spoon-this-time-please-please-please boyfriend is suspiciously missing from the bed you share. Gently, Carlos removed the hamster from its previous position on his forehead and placed it on the night stand. “Cecil?” He called, his voice betraying how tired he still was. “If you’re going to leave me to freeze alone in bed, at least tell me you made coffee.”

Silence.

Carlos moaned, forcing himself up and out of bed, throwing on a robe over his sleeping pants as he stumbled into the hallway and to the kitchen. The coffee maker was cheerfully doing nothing, not even containing a pot of half-drunk coffee; it seemed to look up at him curiously, as if wondering why no one had thought to use it yet that day. (the coffee maker wasn’t looking at him, but he was fairly certain the Secret Police were) Carlos frowned. Cecil could hardly function without coffee. He had actually bitten three interns when they’d accidentally made decaf one day.

He started it, and sat at the table, his fingers dug into his messy hair while he tried to string two thoughts together. Cecil wasn’t in bed, the bathroom was silent (Cecil was a notorious shower-singer), there was no coffee, and unless he’d gotten lost in the back of the closet again, there were no other places he might be. Particularly without coffee. If Cecil were in the apartment, he would have already found his boyfriend collapsed and making pathetic whining noises somewhere until someone put a mug of coffee in his hand. Neither of them would have been roused by any knocking at the door, and Cecil was good about leaving notes about his whereabouts—notes about anything, really.

With the sweet nectar of the equatorial territories steaming in his favorite mug, Carlos wandered back into the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed, and watched the hamster groom itself on the night stand. How strange, he thought as he sipped from his mug, that Cecil should be missing, and a hamster suddenly appear—

“ _Jesucristo_ ,” Carlos swore, and set the mug down on the night stand. “Cecil?”

The hamster chittered happily, reaching up for the rim of the mug. “Oh no, it’s bad enough for you as a human. I don’t think it’d be good for you at all in this shape,” Carlos scolded, scooping him up and holding him close for inspection.

He looked like an ordinary hamster, no special markings that might tell him for sure that this was Cecil and not the result of some random human-hamster exchange program. Then he scurried down Carlos’ arm and up to his shoulder, and tugged on an errant curl of hair. “It’s you all right…” Carlos sighed, resigned to this new situation.

He wasn’t exactly sure how to handle this, he discovered as he tried to go about his day. Cecil might decide to explore the apartment, and get lost inside the couch or in the wall. And what if he changed back when that happened? (would he change back? Please, God, let him change back) He left him in the bedroom while he showered and got ready to go in to the lab, and Cecil seemed content to sit on his shoulder the rest of the time. Carlos figured it might be best just to take him with him; besides, maybe someone else would know what was going on.

The town was strangely empty during the walk to the lab. There were a few cats wandering around, and a jackrabbit or two, but other than that… Normally, there were at least clusters of people screaming at the sky, or pointedly not looking at the hooded figures walking down the middle of the roads while cars passed like the figures weren’t even there. There weren’t even any hooded figures. Shivering at the still and quiet, Carlos unlocked the lab, and went in to start that day’s work.

At some point, Cecil climbed from his shoulder to the top of his head, and he felt him make a sort of nest for himself amongst his hair. Carlos chuckled. “Taking advantage while you can, eh?”

Cecil chittered in response.

Hours must have passed, because the stack of reports he was writing grew larger and larger as he analyzed his most recent slides under the scope. The rest of the world faded away while he tried to unlock the mystery of the giant grapevines that had sprouted in town last week; Cecil was certain it meant nothing, but Carlos had heard one of them hissing at him the other day, and wasn’t sure. Only his eyes giving him the “enough please” warning twinge was enough to bring him out of his academia daze. He rubbed his eyes lightly, pulling at the skin to try and bring feeling other than strain and irritation back; his vision danced when he tried to focus on something more than three feet away. “Overdid it today…”

He pushed back from the desk, wondering what Cecil would talk about on his show that night, until he looked outside and realized that it was very late, and he’d missed the show entirely. “Oh, he’s going to be disappoi—ACK”

Carlos collapsed under the sudden weight of Cecil popping up on top of him. Cecil yelped, arms and legs splayed. “Oh no, oh no, _oh no_ , Carlos I’m so sorry, are you broken, _please_ don’t be broken _I am so sorry_!”

Carlos wheezed. “Right. Hamster. Forgot.”

“Please tell me I didn’t break you!”

“Insufficient data. Breathing limited.”

Cecil yelped again, getting up. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, oh God, I’m so sorry.”

Carlos rolled over, wincing as a few ribs popped back into place. “Okay. I think I’m okay. Maybe. Ow,” he grimaced. “Barely okay. I’ll live.”

He tried to grin in reassurance, but it must have looked terrible because Cecil still looked at him like he might collapse into atomic goo at any second. Which wasn’t _entirely_ out of the realm of possibility, but he still felt decently solid. “What was all that about, anyway?” Carlos asked.

Cecil shrugged. “No idea. It just happens sometimes.”

Right. Of course it did.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a headcanon for this once over on ImagineNightVale, and it's been nagging at me.
> 
> I'm over on ze Tumblrs: http://initiala.tumblr.com


End file.
